Nationalism & Internationalism

Herman van Rompuy is not known as a charismatic politician but, if you have time to read it, he gave a very thoughtful speech yesterday at the College of Europe in Bruges.

In it, he talks about the role of the European Council (rather than the Eurozone ministers or the Parliament) as Europe's nascent "economic government", and the difficulty of creating co-ordinated foreign policy among 27 state actors with different histories and outlooks.

On economics and the eurozone, van Rompuy said:

Tomorrow, I'll have time - I hope - to write something longer about the democratic implications of the Greek bailout, and any conditions that are imposed on Greece in consequence of its financial position and Euro membership.

Conservative Home has the highlights of David Cameron's interview with the Express this morning.

One of the points Mr Cameron makes is that he will never allow the UK to join the Euro. He says:

"I was in the Treasury when we were in the Exchange Rate mechanism, and I said to myself: “Never again should we give up control of our domestic interest rates.” If I am Prime Minister and for as long as I would be Prime Minister, I would never take Britain into the euro, full stop, end of story."

This is an odd statement, not because of its dogmatic certainty (he is talking to the Daily Express, after all) but because when Mr Cameron worked for Norman Lamont, the Chancellor did control domestic interest rates. Since interest-rate powers are now with the Bank of England, Prime Minister Cameron will not be able to control them.

I have been a bit surprised by the number of comments coming in on an old post of mine on the Kercher trial, which has just concluded in Perugia. I commented on British coverage of the trial when it kicked off in February, noting the tendency of the British press to assume that trials in other countries (even their beloved USA) are inherently unfair, and doomed to condemn an innocent Brit to a rat-in

Will the next fifty years be peaceful or war-torn? The climate change negotiations in Copenhagen have a big part to play in that, but another determining factor is the political direction of China. As China becomes more wealthy, and its people become more protective of their property and their rights, will the People's Republic transform itself into something more democratic, or will it drive towards repression? At the moment, the government's rhetorical approach is to push every sort of democracy other than the sort that involves them losing power.